What may be read under an unhappy star
by Vive La Bagatelle
Summary: La Dolcequita reads her cards, and is peturbed. Plotless wonder.
1. King of Swords

A/N I'd just like to make it clear that this is one of those stories with no particular plot that I write largely to amuse myself. Anyone else's amusement is a byproduct. That said, I do ferel duty bound to point out that the story will have more chapters than just this one (eleven more to be precise) so this isn't "it", so to speak.

* * *

**The King of Swords**

The peasants of Asturias believe that in every wolf-litter there is a dog whelp which the mother kills, because otherwise, when it grows large, it will devour the rest of her young.

However, La Dolcequita was from Andalusia, and so was ignorant of this superstition. So, when the baby began to whine fretfully she picked him up unhesitatingly, looking down at her new son as he mewled and smote the air with delicate, impotent fists, red and wrinkled and for all the world like a blind puppy. She put the child to her breast and, gradually, he was pacified. Dolcequita too felt a sort of contentment steal over her, a mildness which lead her, fleetingly, to live up to her sobriquet.  
She had called herself 'Dolcequita' only because sweetness and softness were what men expected of women, and she found it profitable to live up to expectations. In truth there was nothing soft about this she-wolf with her whelp, but, nonsensical as it may sound, even the beasts have their humanity and, at that moment, Dolcequita was happy. She was happy to no longer be pregnant, hating the way it had slowed her down – mentally as much as physically. Now she was free to dance the sevillanas of the mind as much as those of the body. She was happy that all had passed well and safely, and to be in a room that was warm and almost comfortable – it pleased her that she had got something for nothing. She was also unaccountably happy about the small, rather ugly creature at her breast, even those all he truly meant was another mouth to feed. He was, after all, her first son, and Dolcequita already knew that she loved her children (for children now it was) with a ferocity that was almost tigerish. Even if that love translated itself into the real world into care that was, at best, haphazard.

The baby drifted off to sleep, snoring slightly through a piggish nose, and she laid him down to sleep beside her. Gazing at the child, Dolcequita became curious as to what the pup, the little scrap of nothing, would become, of what would become of him. She reached for the cards she kept always close about her person, even during her travails, and drew one: the King of Swords.

She interpreted it on its simplest and most literal level: _A dark haired man with sallow skin, one who demands respect and whose advice is to be trusted. Astrong character. Foreign Affairs and Law and Order . . ._

Not so very inauspicious a beginning.


	2. Seven of Swords

**The Seven of Swords**

_The seven of swords represents both theft and hardship along with being the card of unexpected changes. Be cautious._

"Look, love, you can't sit there for ever."

La Dolcequita gives the gaoler a look of innocence and experience and raises one thick eyebrow as if to say _"Oh, can't I?"_ Then she lowers her eyelids and returns to gazing at her baby with a dull sphinx face.

The gaoler, Jean Guilcher, notices that the little candle on his table is spitting. Not badly, but being a soft man with a taste for domestic order, he decides to attend to it rather than suffer chaos to continue its wicked work in the world. This is lest matters should get out of hand later. Then he waddles to the fire to poke at the chop he has frying in a little tin pan under the mantle, finding the tongs slippery in his sweaty charcuterie fingers.

Out in the Pré, someone sings a tuneless, guttural song

_It's the same the whole world over_

_It's all the fucking same –_

Having clearly found something to trade for a substantial amount of brandy.

Guilcher sighs and turns away from his supper to face the door. In doing so he catches sigh of Dolcequita, who has not moved. Literally has not moved. As much as an eyelid. The movement of those heavy veined lids is what has kept Jean Guilcher reassured that he has a real, live woman under his charge here rather than one of the King's art treasures – _**Scene Avec Une Femme Andalouse**_. After all, objets d'art are not at all in his line of work. But then, Guilcher is sure, neither are pregnant gypsies and their brats.

_It's the rich as gets the pleasure,_

_It's the poor as gets the blame._

The hairs on the back of Guilcher's fat neck bristle with irritation. _"Is that one of the turnkeys?"_ he wonders. Whoever it was, the bastard couldn't sing and the words smacked of, if not insubordination, then at least . . . Guilcher wasn't sure what, but he had a dim sense that it _shouldn't be allowed_, although one might argue that on a night so very bitter and so very near to the nativity of Our Saviour, that a man might be allowed to take what comfort he could find and celebrate how he chose. But that, Guilcher reflected, was the sort of reasoning that had landed him with some tinker bint giving birth in his office. No thanks to the do-gooder Pere Nicholas. _For how could you turn away one so wretched? Just how could you listen to the Christmas gospel and do it? What, practically, were you going to do with the poor creature if you could? _And what answer could you make to such statements if you were soft, fat, unimportant Jean Guilcher?

_All the same! All the fucking same!_

Came the voice from the Pré, rough and coarse as the liquor that had inspired it.

In the pursuit of order, Jean Guilcher walked to the door. As he left, he looked at Dolcequita and her babe and made a plea that was meant to be disguised as an order, but really sounded just like what it was: "I really don't want to see you here when I get back. Understood?"


	3. Seven of Wands, Reversed

**Seven of Wands, Reversed**

Having pushed her luck as far as she could with Jean Guilcher, Dolcequita finally left the prison and made her way onto the rainy streets, her baby on her back. She felt no sorrow for herself or for her child – she had done what she had come to do, and now she was going away again. That was all there was to it.

And besides, she had friends in Brest. Or, rather she had those who would show her hospitality because she was as they were, did as they did, and those were the rules. They child, too, they would welcome, and they would train him to be as they were and do as they did. For, when one is spawned in the same mire . . .

* * *

. . . seated before the fire on the flagstones of a tapis-franc kitchen Recouvrance, Dolcequita again took out her cards, intending to read them properly for her babe. Not that she was a superstitious woman, far from it! Dolcequita was the subtlest beast of the field and mostly when she read her cards it was for the stupid, the gullible, and the desperate, those who would believe anything. And she delighted in making them believe anything. Deception was her livelihood and the theatricality of this particular deception pleased her more than most. But, in quite another frame of mind, she would sometimes read the cards for herself since there was truth in some things, and all that was to be done was to bow before it.

Firstly she searched for the card that she had drawn back in the prison, the King of Swords. That she lay in first place. Then she drew the Seven of Swords, placing it in the house of possession, and she wondered if there would be many swords in this fortune.

The next card was a Wand, the Seven, and it was reversed.

Dolcequita, in an uncharacteristic moment of self-pity, did not apply the card and it's meaning, Insecurity, to the child but to herself. She was so tired, had been tired, it seemed ever since Chabouillet had sent her away from Grand Malaunay. She had come to Brest, and done what she could, but who knew if Andoche would ever get the message, or what the message was for or what good it would do.

She had been shocked when Chabouillet had sent her away from Malaunay, perhaps too shocked. Perhaps she had trusted in her ascendancy over the man too much. Well, at least she had given nothing away – every line of his palm that she'd read or line of his face that she'd caressed had been paid for. It was not a habit with her to give what she could sell.

And Mme Chabouillet had with to come to Malaunay herself for her confinement. Dolcequita could see that it would not have done for her to have remained there, and she could appreciate the humour of the situation. When she retold the tale, of course, it would be the humour that she played up, cutting down the time between her departure and Madame's arrival to the merest sliver, whilst exaggerating other details beyond all proportion. She would tell the whole tale deadpan in her harsh, bitter voice, occasionally casting a smirking look from under her lashes at her audience to see them smile or widen their eyes.

The thought of tales yet to be told was enough to restore Dolcequita to her customary equilibrium, so she set down the Seven of Wands and gazed again at the child, thoughtfully this time. She would have a stubborn child on her hands here, that was sure, a child blessed with courage in adversity and doggedness in defeat, certainly, but the Seven of Wands was also the card that warned of the pitfalls of pride, the card of the Fanatic. Still, it had been drawn reversed, which may well have meant something . . .


End file.
